Last week I wrote about how the Islanders many consider moving to Queens at some point if things concerning the Light House doesn’t get fixed and the places doesn’t get built. It looks like that situation is getting juicier by the minute as yesterday the New York Daily News got an exclusive with Islanders owner Charles Wang. In the piece he even said that Queens or anywhere else for that matter could eventually be an option.

“Right now, the whole focus and the whole plan is on one thing: getting this thing built,” Wang said Thursday. “Obviously, if it doesn’t get done within the time frame, then we look at all options.”

However, the biggest agenda on the mind of Wang and the other people involved is keeping this team on the Island. They don’t want to think of anything else right now.

And for good reason. It’s been over five years since the initial Lighthouse plans were originally made public.

“Bottom line is that if Long Island doesn’t do a good job, we’re going to lose the team,” Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi told The News.

As the Metallica song goes, “Sad But True.”

Is Doug Weight playing for his job?- I also wrote about a week ago how Weight has expressed his affinity for Long Island and would like to be a part of next year’s team. With a handful of games left this season, the All-Star center can make things easy for the Islanders and play his heart out, proving how much he really wants to be here. If the opposite happens, the Islanders may want to wait things out a bit more before they come to a real decision.

Dropping the gloves the other night, it seems apparent that Weight wants to be a leader on this team and wants to be the guy to help the youngsters develop.

“Our team has come a long way the last couple of months and is really coming together,” Weight told the AP after the game. “It’s not like I would do that in a playoff race, but once in a while you have to do that…Our team has been sticking up for each other and really coming together and those things are good to see.”

I personally think that if he had never gotten hurt this season, he’d have more points than Mark Streit and the Islanders decline wouldn’t have been as harsh. Would they still be in last place? That may in fact be debatable.

So when you have a player that can help and is willing to play in the coach’s system, you obviously sign him and make both the fans and the organization happy, right?

Guess we’ll have to wait until July to find out about that one.

Posted under 2008-2009, Isles Thoughts 2009

The Islanders may be in the cellar of the league right now, but according to their coach, Scott Gordon, he’s a better coach because of it.

“It’s made the challenges of coaching the first year in the NHL and it’s allowed me to deal with adversity,” Gordon told the Associated Press right before the All-Star break. “Every team that I’ve coached, at some point you have adversity, whether it’s the loss of players, losing your goaltender, having to manage people that, at times, are unmanageable. There’s all kinds of different things that, when that year is over, you look back on it and learn from it and it makes you a better coach.”

With the amount of injuries this team has had to deal with this season, you kind of have to give Gordon a free pass. If Doug Weight and Rick DiPietro were healthy and Brendan Witt and Radek Martinek in the lineup a bit more often, I really feel that former Isles coach Ted Nolan could have gotten this team to the playoffs or pretty damn close to it. Then seeing what a positive impact Gordon had on some of the youngsters like Chris Campoli and Frans Nielsen in addition to Weight, Guerin and Trent Hunter, I really think this team could have challenged for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, this dude is one crazy cat, but back when Joey MacDonald was one of the NHL’s players of the month, this team was scoring enough to get by and was playing decent defense. The rest of the league, simply put, was shocked. No one wanted to admit that the New York Islanders played their tails off every night and had a decent chance at coming out with two points regardless of who they were playing.

Despite the fact of the rumors that this team may be moved and where they are in the standings right now, I feel that Gordon can be the guy to help lead them to the land of respect once again. Is it going to be a quick process? No, but the fact that Gordon isn’t letting up and is ready to continue taking the beating he’s taken this season is a good sign to me.

He’s not giving up. And if he doesn’t maybe some of the youngsters will play the same way over the last 35 games of the season and put a smile on my face a few times before the season’s over.

Just maybe.

Photo by the AHL.

Posted under 2008-2009, Isles Thoughts 2009

Forgive my semi-off-topic rant in the beginning, I promise it’ll get somewhere by the end!

When I first became a journalist, I was told by another writer a few years my senior that by just being at games, you learn things that fans could kill to know and by just being at those games, you never know what stories you can get. It’s just a matter of dedicating yourself to giving up your fandom and showing up every night with your laptop, recorder and shirt and tie and just being there. You show up two and a half hours before the game and you stay until after the game is over. You basically earn the respect of the players and the organization, which basically puts you in a situation to do your job better than anyone else.

This season, I have done that on my AcesOverBrooklyn.com site, which is dedicated to my coverage of the EPHL’s Brooklyn Aces and last night I got a bit of a reward for that hard work. Dropping the ceremonial first puck at the game last night was Montreal Canadiens forward Chris Higgins, who I had the opportunity to talk to after the game. We talked about his season for most of the interview, but I did manage to sneak in question I’ve been waiting to ask someone in the Montreal organization all season:

“Your powerplay isn’t nearly as good as it was last season, what did Mark Streit mean to it’s success?”

While Guy Carbonneau has dodged the question with the New York and Montreal media all season, Higgins, a Smithtown-native, was honest about what Streit meant to the Habs.

“He was a big reason why our powerplay was number one,” said Higgins. “He’s got a great shot as many of you guys in New York now know. He’s a great guy off the ice and he deserves to be playing every minute that he’s been playing this season. I’m glad he’s been given a shot to be a number one defenseman.”

If I was Streit, a comment like this would mean more than an All-Star nod. It means that the Canadiens know now that they made a mistake letting him go. Like I said before, the organization won’t admit it, but the players he shared a locker room with know just how vital he was.

Let’s hope the Islanders don’t make the same mistake in the future.

Photo by Patrick Hickey Jr.

Posted under 2008-2009, Isles Memories, Isles Thoughts 2009, NHL

A few days ago, I came across a beefy topic that caught my interest. According to HockeyBuzz.com, the Chicago Black Hawks are reportedly interested in the services of Mike Comrie. At first, I didn’t think much of it, considering the fact that the Islanders are already missing Mike Sillinger and need all the help up the middle they can get. After a few e-mails from people on the subject though, I figured I’d share my two cents.

For what my opinion is worth, I don’t think Comrie will ever be a point a game player in the NHL. Right now, he would be an excellent third line center on a great team or a solid second line center on a very good team. Only on a fridge or rebuilding team like the Islanders could he get a shot at being a number one center. That shot didn’t exactly go as planned for him last season either, as his lack of polish on defense and overuse of simple deke moves [like the toe drag, cough] hurt him down the stretch and turned what could have been a career year into another decent one.

Last season, around the All Star break, Comrie was pretty close to a point a game and once he had to be counted on more to provide offense when injuries enveloped the team, his game suffered incredibly. Being even more judgmental here, if you take away the first week of the season from him last year, where he lit up the Buffalo Sabres and it’s totally possible that he could have had his worst offensive season since his rookie campaign.

This season, it appears that the Islanders head coach Scott Gordon prefers to see Doug Weight play with Bill Guerin and because of that, Comrie has been relegated to playing on a line with Richard Park and Kyle Okposo. While some Islander fans aren’t too excited about this, I feel that once Mike Sillinger comes back, the Islanders lines will be pretty well balanced and Comrie won’t be a victim of playing against the opposition’s best defensive players every night, which will benefit him and his current linemates immensely. He’ll produce the same amount of offense he did last season, but it will be worth even more to the team because he’ll be more of a role player than a primary producer. Trading him now would ruin any chance this team has at having a decent offensive attack.

Don’t do it Garth Snow.

That is unless you’re willing to play Josh Bailey in more than nine games this season and you can get a first or second round pick for him.

Posted under 2008-2009, Isles Thoughts 2008

Over the past month or so, a lot of writers, bloggers and pundits that cover this team have been writing about the youth movement and how the youngsters will have to develop at a rapid pace for this team to make the playoffs this season. Some have even conjured up potential trades for players like Jay Bouwmeester. I, on the other hand, prefer to focus on what the Islanders currently have and not on what they could have.

With guys like Mark Streit and Doug Weight in the fold and the youngsters getting more of an opportunity, the Islanders offense this season is going to be hit or miss. However, unlike those same writers, bloggers and pundits who don’t give the Islanders a chance in hell in making the playoffs this season, I believe they do have a chance.

And that one small, almost minuscule chance this team has in making the playoffs doesn’t depend on any new player or any youngster.

It depends on Rick DiPietro.

It’s funny to me how a team with such a rich history like the Isles could have fans with such horrendous short term memory. They remember the bad trades and the years playing golf [I especially remember them] in May, but they don’t remember the small things. Before this team collapsed down the stretch last season, they were right in the thick of things. The reason why wasn’t because of an amazing offense or shut down defense. It was because of their goaltending. DP was an All-Star. And better yet, he deserved to be there; he had the numbers. They were actually better than a few Vezina finalists, one named Henrik Lundqvist.

However, after getting injured, the Isles went in a downward spiral and DP’s own unwillingness to take time off wound up hurting the team even more. If Wade Dubielewicz could have gotten in more games for an injured DP, who knows what could have happened. This season though, the Isles don’t have that kind of insurance and DP will be asked to not do the little things he’s done over the past few seasons that have hurt his team and his career. This season, DP will be asked to not be so aggressive with the puck and to take a day off every five games or so. Regardless of what the gregarious and confident goaltender may think, 65 games is more than enough for any starting NHL goaltender and by not playing 75, he won’t break down like he has over the past two seasons.

In the end, if he can stay healthy and on top of his game all season, this team will challenge for the final playoff spot. Once the playoffs begin, it’s a whole other ballgame.

But if DP is more preoccupied with chasing pucks away from fourth liners at the blue line in Montreal or playing past injuries in All-Star competitions than keeping this team on his back, the Islanders’ season will be over before it gets started.

Notes-

Don’t think I forgot about the second part of “These Kids Will be Alright.” Expect it on either Monday or Tuesday. I just felt the need to talk about our good ole buddy Rick DiPietro.

Photo courtesy of NHL Media

Posted under Offseason 2008